Photos by: Maciej Hevi Janas

War, Jail and Cancer Culture with Vogg

Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Friday 6 May 2022

Most people go about their lives with no real idea of just how much they have to lose – your home, your relationships, your freedom, even your life. DECAPITATED and MACHINE HEAD guitarist Waclaw “Vogg” Kieltyka knows this better than most. Whether it’s taking supplies to the Ukrainian border to help refugees fleeing Russian aggression, his own experience being jailed with his bandmates in the U.S. in 2017 (on charges that we ultimately dropped after 100 days in captivity), or the tragedy that devastated the band’s original lineup, he knows what it’s like to have your whole world ripped away in a heartbeat. With the release of DECAPITATED’s first album in five years, boasting a revitalised sound and surprising guest spots from JINJER and MACHINE HEAD, Vogg opened up to SENSE …

So you’re in Poland at the moment?

Yes, I’m in Poland right now in my home. Today I have an interview day, because yesterday we were doing a video. We’ve been filming a video for another single from the record, and another one in two weeks … It’s cool, because we already released two videos … Cancer Culture and Hello Death with Tatiana from JINJER, and right now we have another one, and then tomorrow, we’re going to film another one. [Laughs] Busy week!

Am I allowed to know what the next single is?

Next will be Just a Cigarette, and another one will be Iconoclast with Robb Flynn on guest vocals.

That was Robb Flynn? It didn’t say who it was, and I was there going, “Is that Corey Taylor? Nah!” I knew I knew that fucking voice. [Laughs]

That’s funny, because everybody says the same [thing] – they didn’t recognise that it was Robb in the beginning, just on the last verse when he starts to scream, so it’s more recognisable that it’s Robb. But yeah, that’s cool. That’s even better! That means that he sings in a different way for us, which is cool.

I saw on your personal Instagram that you were at the Ukrainian border … What’s the vibe like over there at the moment? It’s crazy times.

Well, right now, it’s another day of war. It’s almost two months right now, or even more, and it’s just a huge humanitarian crisis. Thousands of people have died, they’ve been killed, and [the] Ukrainian fighters, they are really heroes. I mean, c’mon, if you’re facing aggression from Russia, come on, you need to be really brave, and Ukrainians are. They are really upstanding people … They are not letting anybody go through their country. They are fighting to the last soldier, and they are doing whatever they can … What they’re doing needs to be respected. I hope this war is going to finish soon, because it’s just a terrible thing. So many people dead, and so many refugees from Ukraine, like a million people, especially the women and children, escaping from them … that’s crazy. It’s a really sad situation, a really bad situation, what Russia is doing right now.

Have you met a lot of refugees?

Yeah, I’ve seen hundreds, even thousands of refugees on the border. It was maybe the second or third day of the aggression, so people started escaping from there. I was there with my two friends, taking some food, medical supplies, clothes and everything that we could pack into my van. We were crossing the border, like a hundred, two hundred metres on the Ukrainian side, and give the supplies to the Ukrainian people, and I saw lines of people, hundreds of people, crossing the Ukrainian-Polish border. They were tired, they were in shock. They had a few hours to take one bag, two bags and some clothes and go. It’s really terrible. They didn’t know where to go, what to expect. Luckily the Polish society helped them a lot. The Polish people are helping so much. We give them everything that they need – food, water, medicines, toys, everything. The help was huge. I drove with my friends, like, four times there, with the bus completely full of anything we could pull into the car, from the floor to the roof. It was full, and we brought it to the other side … It was kind of stressful to be there on the border, for sure. I always heard about the war happening on the radio when I was driving, and I feel some kind of shock. The first moment I was in shock, and the second moment, I felt like we needed to do something … anything to help. Me and my wife and a bunch of friends from the neighbourhood here, we do action on Facebook. We’re making a PayPal account, and people can donate to the Ukrainian people, so we collect a lot of money on this PayPal … We did a benefit show in Krakow, collecting three or four thousand dollars … I think everybody who has a band or who has any opportunity, even having an empty flat or empty space in the flats, should take some family, or at least one or two people, to help. So many people need help, but they know that Polish people … even my family members, they took three or four girls to their home, taking care of them, giving them a home and food and stuff like that. It’s big help from Polish society, which makes me proud, and makes me feel that there is some kind of hope for humanity in this crazy time, when everybody is fighting each other and screaming at each other. It looks like people have lots of positive energy inside. It’s just politicians and some other leaders trying to incorporate so much hate so they can rule this world.

I’m not looking for scoops on any of this, or anything you don’t want to talk about, but one thing I am interested in is mental health. I’m a huge advocate for that. You went through a horrible experience [in the U.S.]. What did that teach you about yourself? And what steps did you have to take to rehabilitate yourself after something so horrible?

After what happened – after being in the jail for 100 days, facing prison life and stuff like that – it was really kind of traumatic experience. Not every day there, being there, was bad. [Laughs] I met a few really cool people inside, you know, to be honest. But there was a few days where I was just shitting in my pants, or just losing my mind from the fear, because there was some kind of situation, like you watch in the movies, prison movies, like facing inmates … they’re looking for you. In the middle of the night, [thinking] like, “Oh damn, it’s going to happen.” We’d been facing aggression. We’d been facing fights between prisoners, and lots of stress just regarding our charges and being in the courtroom and waiting for another court hearing, and facing years in prison, so it was very traumatic for us. And outside of that, being inside of this place, all this cancel [culture] on the internet that we’ve been facing since we were out. Our lives were completely destroyed, and we’ve been in a really terrible situation since 2017 … I’m not sure about the rest of the guys, but I didn’t have any of the help from the professional mental health people. I wasn’t in a psychiatric place or anything like that. I’ve been dealing with all of this by myself. Dealing with being in this kind of situation, you need to learn how to deal with that. Being in this kind of place, you need to learn all these rules inside – how to behave, how to speak with people, what to do and what not to do … It was a few really hard days for me. I was out of my mind, but then I speak with my family by phone, so it helped me, and also I met a few guys, especially one guy in my cell … he talked with me, and he explained how it worked. “You need to do this, you need to do this.” So I was probably looking for the people around that … I could talk [to] … some kind of same way of thinking … [In the next few] days, my mental situation became better and better. We started to jog, share the coffees, share the food and stuff like that, and we start to not panic … Just find some kind of ways to make our situation better. It’s hard to say about all of this, because it's a really complex thing, being in a jail, dealing with the lawyers, dealing with the inmates, dealing with all the situation. That was kind of an abstract situation. It never happened before in our lives, so we were just learning how to deal with that situation every day.

Were you with the rest of the band? Or were you kept separate?

We were all separate. Sometimes we would be all together, but for the last two months, we were separate, because that was the rule from the prosecutors. We had to be separate, so we can’t share information between us. But anyway, it finished good. We’ve been released, charges were dropped, and after this, every next month was better and better. Actually, we even stopped talking about it and even think about it, which is a good sign. For sure, it leaves some kind of experience, some kind of scars in our brains … I think it just makes us better people in some way … stronger. For example, when I talk with people right now, when I do interviews, when I have to deal with some important things, like business, after the jail experience, I’m kind of stronger, and I know better how to make things in a good way, you know? I don’t know how to explain, but it was really hard, but an important lesson for each of us. We all become smarter people, and every next day, every decision I make in my life, it needs to be good. I need to think twice or three times before I say something, before I do something, in important things, or every small not-important thing. I try to make the best decision I can, because we all found out what freedom means. It’s such a fragile thing, and so important, to be free. Freedom is probably the most important thing, except to be healthy of course. To have freedom, it’s something that most other people don’t think about. It’s just a normal thing, like breathing air. Freedom is something that we all deserve, but it’s something that people don’t …

They take it for granted?

Yes, yes. If you are on the other side, if you are losing your freedom, if you are losing your clothes, if you are losing your food, your chance to go to the shops, your chance to do anything that you think is normal, then you think, “Oh shit. This is like losing everything.” Even having the opportunity to wear your own clothes is a privilege. It’s something really, really important … I believe it’s something like being sober. Every next day being sober is something you appreciate, because you can go for a walk, you can play sport, you can do whatever you want – you know what’s going on. For example, I was reading the book of Randy [Blythe] from LAMB OF GOD. He did this book when he was in prison in Prague in the Czech Republic. He was also an alcoholic, and for a few years now he’s not drinking, so he mentioned [that] he was always drunk on tour, because the LAMB OF GOD guys drink a lot. I know that – we toured with them. [Laughs] I think he and the guitar player are sober now. He mentioned that he was always drunk on tour, and during all the tours, visiting beautiful places like Australia, and you are hungover, you have the day off, but you spend all day in your hotel room to fight with your hangover and your demons, in your bed, trying to feel better. The rest of the guys are having lunch, going for walks, visiting nice places, and you lose another chance in your life because you were wasted and you have a hangover, and that’s how it works. [I compare it to] going out of jail, and feeling freedom again was just an outstanding feeling. I feel like I’m born again right now, and everything tastes ten times better, you know? It’s amazing. That’s why I’m so happy to go to the shop, to make a barbeque, to meet with my friends, to play guitar and everything like that. It was a really terrible experience, but in some way it made our lives better.

Cancer Culture is out May 27th on Nuclear Blast.

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